Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Wheel of Theodorus Bulletin Board

Every year, I have this plan to change my bulletin boards out throughout the school year. This year that happened only once. It also happened way back in November, and I'm only now blogging about it. I know I've found lots of bulletin board ideas online, so I wanted to make sure I got this posted.

I was looking for an artsy project for my trig students to do on those odd couple of days before Thanksgiving Break. On Pinterest, I had pinned a picture of a Wheel of Theodorus, and I used that as my inspiration. I gave my students the first page of this project sheet that I found thanks to good old google.

My students definitely struggled with reading the instructions and carrying them out. I found that my students who tried to follow the steps on a piece of notebook paper first before starting on their final project that was to be turned in produced much better looking results!

It was fun to see what creative ideas my students came up with to turn their spirals into. I definitely need to look for more opportunities to give my students to be creative inside the classroom. They never fail to surprise me!

3 comments:

I had my grade 9 geometry students do the spiral as part of their Pythagorean Theorem unit. Like you, I had some amazing creativity from my students! This was great, because I am teaching in Asia, and most students here do not add the creative touch to their work. Like you, I need to find more creative type activities for my students.

BTW, I love reading your blog. Even though I am in my 20th year of teaching, I am still inspired by other teachers and always looking for new ideas.

Hi my name is Allie and I am in the secondary education program at the University of Illinois in hopes of becoming a high school math teacher someday. I am just getting into this blogging thing and I love reading all of the creative and fun activities/lessons/insight that teachers have. I have learned so much already just from reading posts and stories from your own experience so thank you for that. I like the idea of showing off the student’s work on the bulletin board. It gives the students some power and a motivating activity that forces them to persevere through the problem. I was wondering if the students were able to work in groups on the problem? Was it for a grade, extra credit or just for fun? If it didn’t count for anything in class, I was wondering how you motivated your students to commit to the problem? Did you only put the good ones on the board or did you include everyone that turned one in? Thanks for hearing the rookie out and for considering my questions.

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